Was Dirt Candy’s Menu Box Vandalized by the ‘Vegetarian Mafia’?

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The Steve’s Key Lime dognabbing isn’t the only crime that was met with an impassioned plea for justice. Three days after its installation, Dirt Candy’s plastic menu box was cracked and dragged down the block by vandals. The perpetrators apparently didn’t care that, per a letter on the restaurant’s site, the box was “handcrafted in the mountains of Brooklyn” and “paid for with a bag of gold dust and a magical chicken.” The letter went on to threaten, “Rest assured, little vandals, this menu box is going to come looking for you in the night.” Today, chef Amanda Cohen updates Gothamist on the police investigation. Could the crime have had something to do with her previous comments that vegetarian restaurants are always horrible?

What’s the status on that? Well, right now it’s at the hospital. It’s being slowly repaired. I have a little artisan that’s taping it all back together.

Did the police have any promising leads? No, because amazingly enough I found the one super-police-proof menu box. The police officer was really nice, he was like, “I’m going to dust for fingerprints anyway.” But I warned him that, obviously, lots of people touched it. And he came back and said, “Wait, there’s not a single fingerprint on it.”

What’s up with that? Whatever plastic the menu box is made out of, it didn’t accept them. You would have to press through really really hard.
Or maybe they wiped it down after they broke it? Maybe. I don’t think they cared very much since they tossed it halfway down the block.

There are a lot of vegetarian restaurants in the neighborhood. Do you suspect foul play? Well, the next week somebody tried to break in. They ended up just breaking the lock; they weren’t very good at their jobs. But the guy from the barber shop across the street did say he thought it was the vegetarian mafia warning me. I was like, “Really?”